


An inconvenience

by N0L1M374NG3R3



Series: Huleth (bilingual) [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Awkward Sexual Situations, Coping with feelings, F/M, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Introspection, My Unit | Byleth Has Emotions, POV My Unit | Byleth, Spa Treatments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25805182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N0L1M374NG3R3/pseuds/N0L1M374NG3R3
Summary: Thermal Baths at Garreg Mach's happen to provide an eventful night to the advantage of Byleth's awareness about her own and newly found feelings. Hubert has no clue... or has he?
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Hubert von Vestra
Series: Huleth (bilingual) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1902814
Kudos: 26





	An inconvenience

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [L'inconveniente](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25787593) by [N0L1M374NG3R3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/N0L1M374NG3R3/pseuds/N0L1M374NG3R3). 



> Not too graphic, mentions of scars and an implied "complicated past" for Hubert (check the tags). Mainly introspective, F!Byleth POV.  
> Listened to capital Nick Cave's 2020 "Ghosteen" album while writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwlU_wsT20Q  
> This work was written in Italian and translated with the aid support of Google Translat (yes, I am darned lazy).  
> Yet, basing myself on a first GT draft, I have revised, rephrased and changed terms every time I found the translation lacking, stiff or unfaithful either to English wording and structure or to my original meaning.  
> Please bear in mind English is not my first language, so feel free to correct when you notice something is wrong or weird-sounding.  
> I am going to post the original text too (after some improvement I thought of while translating it).

_Well there goes your moony man_  
_With his suitcase in his hand_  
_Every road is lined with animals_  
_That rise from their blood and walk_  
_Well the moon won't get a wink of sleep_  
_If I stay all night and talk_  
_If I stay all night and talk_

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, "Ghosteen"

It had been an unfortunate oversight, of course, a small accident.  
Byleth had promised herself more prudence in the future, but the matter had slipped out of hand without her being able to fix it.  
It was a new situation, and new for her to experience sensations of such intensity.  
She felt talking to Father about it would have been difficult, and as for the Girl on the Throne, she just giggled in a soft voice and then kept quiet, kept quiet oh so stubbornly and for so long that Byleth could almost forget about Her presence.  
Things had deteriorated (yes, _deteriorated_ was about the right word) and Byleth had no idea how to revert them to normality.  
Everything had gotten worse since that first time, after which came those… _symptoms_.  
Perchance she should have conferred with Manuela on the subject, but never found her just sober enough and, moreover, the doctor’s constant giggling and her more than patent inclination for gossip vexed her immensely.  
Perhaps rather out of sheer disliking of Manuela’s attitude than for any other practical reason, Byleth had little faith doctor Casagranda would listen seriously to her and, above all, she wasn't sure Manuela could show an acceptable degree of discretion about that… _indisposition_ of hers.  
Moreover, no doubt she would be requested about how the inconvenience had presented itself: this would have required a more or less detailed description of the events that took place "that evening" - as she now called it to herself. And Byleth felt terribly embarrassed about it.  
During her mercenary years, she had either witnessed or directly partaken in far worse situations, of course, but never had she felt so affected, never involved in such way.  
And then, there was the principal issue: the discipline and roles within the monastery and in the Church – completely new and bizarre to her, despite Fódlan youth seemed effortlessly comply as they were the only possible horizon of life.

To begin with, the cause of everything had been her darn insomnia – which was, on the other hand, nothing but a consequence of the monastic rule’s rigidity, as well as of the fact that it was extended indifferently to teachers and students as well.  
Mercenary life was anything but free: it included a peculiar quality of discipline, whose roots laid in sheer survival rather in any corpus of positive law. However, for this same reason the custom of mercenaries – though in some respects even stricter than Garreg Mach’s rules- proved even more reasonable, and no doubt perfectly suitable to whom they were intended for.  
In other words, the habit of military discipline proved insufficient in helping Byleth cope with the habits of the monastery, which stroke her as arbitrary as the etiquette and the noble hierarchies everyone else in the Academy seemed to deem entirely natural, almost inescapable.  
To be forced to sleep strictly between ten in the evening and six in the morning, even when she didn’t feel like; being prevented from resting when she was in need to, rather than at command; retreating to her private apartments and having to be alone, in silent darkness, while she was used to nap surrounded by the chaos of the encampments with its voices and presences: all this was terribly hard to get accustomed to.  
No wonder, then, if _that night_ she had felt a desperate need to leave her room in search for air and ended strolling up and down along the pier.  
Eventually she resigned to walking back towards the dormitories: and it was then, climbing the last steps and approaching the flower beds to pick some dry leaves the autumn wind had carried there, that she noticed a light in the Thermal Palace.  
It was an unusual time – two in the morning – but that light attracted her to the Palace: it would have been so nice to allow herself a relaxing bath!  
As a lecturer at the Academy, she had been given a set of universal keys by Seteth – he had handed it to her with plain reluctance, but such were Her Holiness's orders; with those, there was virtually no place Garreg Mach she could not access.  
Glad of having found a diversion from the boredom and restlessness she had grown accustomed to in those last nights – she rarely managed to fall asleep before three o'clock – Byleth climbed the ramp leading to the establishment.

The building, designed in a frivolous style which contrasted with the starkness of monastic architectures, hosted two distinct sections, each separated from the other by a well-groomed court. The left section housed the loos serving the West wing terraces, while the right one consisted of several rooms dedicated to saunas, thermal baths and a large swimming pool open to students’ recreation and swimming competitions.  
Byleth found the entrance door closed but not barred: yet, she remembered all the annexes were locked starting at ten, when curfew fell on the monastery and students were strongly discouraged from leaving the dormitories with any destination differing from the infirmary.  
The Palace had been left open either deliberately, to the free access of patrols who might need its loos, or out of sheer negligence on keeper’s behalf.  
At first, the thought hit Byleth that leaving the pool unattended might lead to accidents: anyone could find that the doors were open, just like she did, sneak in to take a couple of dives and find none to assist them in case they felt ill or, worse, risked drowning.  
Preoccupied with such perspective she rushed in and headed for the eastern wing, passing the baths: yet, the four doors leading to the pool had actually been barred. Reassured, Byleth retraced her steps to the entrance and stopped in awe.  
The entrance hall, paved in marble and decorated with elegant stucco reliefs blossoming all along its walls, was dimly lit by small lamps powered with electric runes.  
Byleth recalled the lights were left on even after the structure was closed: a precautionary measure made possible by the advancement in Crest-engineering, since rune-lit lamps had significantly lesser chances to start fires, as it had been often the case with oil lamps.  
The baths, now devoid of the usual crowds of students, workers and members of the Clergy coming and going through their halls, resembled a ballroom. The smell of ferruginous springs gushing from the mountain’s entrails and the mixed scents of wax and soap lingered in the air, and the floors still gave off a slight impression of warmth from the furnaces drowsing under Garreg Mach’s foundations.  
Byleth shrugged as she contemplated the frescoes draped all over the vaults like thin veils of colour. She still had to get used to awe - perhaps the first feeling she felt when crossing the thresholds of the monastery; the Dagdan cities, which not seldom she had visited in her journeys with Father, had certainly looked wonderful in the past, yet survived conflict paying a heavy toll of ruins to it.  
Never before in her whole life had she seen such splendour and elegance, gathered in the same place and so liberally displayed.

Shaking herself, she finally wondered whether the bathrooms were closed like the swimming pool. To find it out, she ventured forth through the corridor which, after a wrought iron door, led to the changing rooms and into the Thermal quarters.  
As she was pleasantly surprised to find, the passage was free. Once through the door, the access forked: to the left opened a corridor leading to the courtyard around which the changing rooms had been arranged. To the right stood the first rooms of Men’s quarters, with showers and bathrooms to get washed before entering the saunas and, after these, other thermal baths with different kind of waters. From that point on, there were no more doors or barriers of sort.  
Women's quarters and the related changing halls had been located right above the courtyard, in the gallery floor from which female hosts could head directly to their own thermal facilities. However, as the baths were deserted, Byleth decided there was absolutely no need to climb the stairs. She slipped into the first room of the courtyard and quickly undressed, bundling her uniform in her cloak, her undergarments in her boots, and then hiding everything behind a closet, tightly pressed behind her armored breastplate, as she learnt to do in many years of camping life.  
Inside a half-open locker she spotted clean linen breeches and undershirt – the sauna clothes usually left at the disposal of the Palace guests, who stashed them after use in special baskets from which the washer personnel would recover and refresh them to refill the lockers again.  
Byleth grabbed the tunic and, since it came out to be rather large for her actual size, wrapped it around herself like a towel.  
Barefoot and rejoicing in the warmth of the floors, she proceeded past the showers and reached the first bathroom.

The room Byleth entered was partially dark, with the exception of a series of lamps lit along the furthest walls: however, their lights were muffled.  
Right at the center of the space opened a large pool – hardly deeper than three feet.  
The ceramic flooring was decorated with delicate green and blue motifs, as to spread the charms of water shining at the core of the room.  
Yet, as Byleth entered, hidden in the shadows and behind two blue mosaic columns that sheltered the view of those who entered, in turn shielding them from whoever might stand in the tub, she realized the baths were not as deserted as she thought.  
A rinsing came from the tub: the unmistakable sound of someone rubbing vigorously in the water. Every now and then, a few sprays rose up on the majolica banks, sparkling for a moment under the muted lamps.  
The floor was slightly convex, so that any water dripping on the floor might slid towards the surrounding walls, bordered by a grid of collection grates: however, due to this peculiarity, from the position Byleth was standing she could hardly catch a sight of whoever might be immersed in the tub.  
Anyone else would simply retreat without dwelling too much on the identity of the other nightly visitor, especially since Byleth was actually trespassing to Men's baths – a detail that she had completely overlooked, taken up as she was by the singularity of such circumstances.  
However, and despite all appearances, Byleth possessed a curious nature: and her curiosity was all the more sparkled by the consideration that only few people besides lecturers and Jeralt Eisner possessed full and undisturbed access to the monastery's annexes.  
Of these people, then, given one reason or another, none stroke her as the type to be possibly caught in such place, at such unusual time.  
Who else then owned the keys – or was in the position to get them – and might want to use such convenience at a late hour, almost if trying to avoid any possible company?  
She mentally scanned the registers of her pupils: as a matter of fact, she had learnt it by heart along with the notes provided to her by Hanneman, who proved once again, as well as a trusted adviser about the arts of teaching, an enthusiastic collector of each smallest information available on any imaginable subject.  
She was so engrossed in her effort to miss what was happening: namely, she failed to timely notice that the person in the tub, having evidently finished his ablutions, lifted himself and went up the flooded stone bank with unsuspected agility.

Before her, drenched and desolately naked, was Hubert Von Vestra.  
Yes, Hubert Von Vestra the feared retainer of Edelgard, Hubert Von Vestra the sardonic, the misanthrope, the disturbing young man who seemed to harbour a sort of personal grudge against her and who never missed an opportunity to remind her, with gestures, looks and more or less veiled threats, how little he esteemed her, how much he considered her a treacherous, unreliable pest, as well as incompetent and absolutely below any minimum standard required to teach at as an illustrious institution as Garreg Mach.  
Byleth's first reaction was, of course, to laugh. Not that it happened often, and even more difficultly the grimace that was drawn on her face on those rare occasions could have resembled a laugh.  
However, there was something undeniably grotesque about the situation at hand: she was alone in front of her enemy, caught in a moment of vulnerability (not that she really considered him an _enemy_ , but since Hubert had been trying all his best to convince her he considered himself as such, she couldn’t so easily dismiss his will).  
Luckily, Byleth knew better about the delicacy of the circumstance and how to adapt to it: swallowing downher sarcasmshe was quick to flatten herself against the nearest column.  
She moved deftly, she moved discreetly and, above all, without the slightest noise. Despite being famous among the students for excellent hearing and refined senses, Hubert did not notice her in the least.  
Congratulating herself for her skillfulness, Byleth smiled bitterly: had she really been the kind of person Von Vestra accused her to be, that night it would have cost her no effort to dispose of his life and get him out of the way once and for all.

Meanwhile, the young and blissfully unaware Marquis was shaking the water off with quick nervous gestures. Then, incomprehensibly to Byleth, he knelt on the ground to wipe the floor with a rag he must have prepared before entering the tub.  
Curled up on the wet tiles, bent over the reflection of that white and impossibly long body of his, it seemed that his calm couldn’t be perturbed by anything- neither his nakedness nor the hardly noble effort of cleaning the floor and then squeezing the wetness out of cloth and into the duct.  
Quickly did his hands redden- those hands large yet thin, full of cuts and burns and dense of tendons, veins tensed in the pallor of his skin: yet, Hubert looked like he paid no mind to them. In fact, he kept twisting and wringing the rag with seemingly unquenched vigour.  
Since the very first class, when she was stricken by his cruelly wan, marked face and stark demeanour, Byleth had always noticed he wore gloves, never undressing them, not even at lunch. Honestly, the fashion was rather common among the patricians of the Academy, except they seldom missed the opportunity to remove at least one glove and wave it gracefully in mid-air to exhibit the fluidity of their flourish (such was the case with Von Aegir, a true master at glove-waving. If only he had shown the same commitment to his Faith seminars...)  
As for Hubert, however, Byleth had always suspected there was more to his habit than futile aesthetics. Finally, she got a glimpse of his true motifs: the spectacle of his hands was just too terrible, too painful to be shown openly, and thus he opted to hide them, out of discretion or shame.  
Byleth didn't even need to look more closely to guess all the calluses, fractures and scars old and new that crowded on his fingers and palms. They spoke volumes of past tortures as well as more recent abuse.  
A shiver ran down her spine while she pressed against the column: an unknown feeling burst forth, raising suddenly from a different soul than her own. It was Sothis, the Beginning, and while the emotion of the Goddess deposited in her to morph into an emotion _of her own_ , a sentiment _of her own_ , Byleth learnt, for the very first time, how burdening compassion could feel inside her heart.  
Only a few minutes later- recovering, taming herself to the novelty of those feelings- her gaze came to rest on what, until then, had lookedno more than a blurred flesh nebula, a profile floating above the water: Hubert's body.  
As the revelation proceeded from those poor hands of his to the rest of his figure, it was as he was coming true under her eyes, acquiring sudden weight, depth and detail.

Initially, Byleth had looked for other scars, other signs: although whatever had happened had clearly affected his hands more than any other part of his body, other marks could be traced here and there, especially on his thighs. She also caught a glimpse if something- pitiful- on his back as he hunched forward to reach the floor all around his feet.  
However, her face against the cold hard tiles of the column, Byleth Eisner allowed herself to notice something else: the Marquis’s body was not only marred and abused, but also young and, in its own way, sharply elegant.  
Stripped of the uniform and of the role that it meant, stripped - he believed - from the gaze of observers, Hubert Von Vestra no longer retained any of the insolence usually characterizing his public persona.  
He looked quieter now, practical, almost pleasantly demure; his gaze was thoughtful but devoid of any of his customary mischievousness.  
Byleth also observed he possessed beautiful proportions and that he moved gracefully, although, in other circumstances, both his thinness and height caused him to stand out as completely misplaced among the others, shorter and much sturdier than he was.  
Perhaps his features were not exactly attractive, but Hubert clearly belonged in that kind of men who compensate for an unpleasant face with a shapely physique, and who are more pleasing to the eye without any clothes on than fully dressed.  
Byleth had known many, among the mercenaries, often well developed and elegant, but disfigured in the face or with crudely marked features- such one might well have considered his father, too.  
As she studied him, finally, her gaze lingered in the space between his legs.  
Byleth had seen naked men before, of course, and had never been particularly curious about their anatomy. Jeralt Eisner had done everything possible to raise her in what he defined a "clean environment”, but truth was that, among mercenaries, a certain promiscuity could hardly be avoided.  
Sooner or later one could happen to sleep side by side with a fellow soldier, if not with a perfect stranger. The possibility of surprising someone hiding in the bushes or hitting back-alleys for a good slash (or else) was not that remote, either, as it was sharing the same creek in the wilderness to get a bath and rinse clothes that, sometimes, were the only ones available, which led to waiting together naked or badly covered until the darn stuff had dried.  
The nudity of others made her no more uncomfortable than her own and, in general, left her completely indifferent.  
Yet, this time, seeing Hubert, observing the curve of his groin that plunged into a short cloud of dark dripping hair and then, further down, into his sex, caused her a weird and heady sensation.  
It was not an entirely unpleasant emotion, but it rendered her somewhat restless and, probably engrossed in her feeling, she eventually sighed or moved awkwardly enough to attract his attention.

Alarmed, Hubert jumped up with a brusque movement; on the verge of losing his balance, he slipped on the floor and the rag fell from his hand with a wet sound.  
Hadn't Byleth been focused on trying to made out of there without being caught, she might have noticed then that the water pooling around the rag had a distinctly red hue.  
"Who's there? Stop at once! " Hubert’s voice resounded with an imperious tone while he got back on his feet and inspected the shadows in front of him.  
Byleth made a quick evaluation: the floor was slippery enough to give her an edge. Also, Hubert wouldn't leave the Palace until he got something to cover himself with.  
It was sufficient for her to take advantage of the time it would take for him to reach the door: so she stepped back shielding herself behind the column and, flattening along the door frame, managed to sneak away without excessive effort.  
It was unlikely Hubert had recognized her: in any case, she wasted no time retrieving her clothes and flew to the exit.  
In two minutes she had left the Thermal Palace behind and, proceeding hastily along the walls, had slipped safely into her room.  
Fortunately, after undressing she had decided to take the keys with her and tied them around her neck, so she didn't have to worry: in case someone found them in the locker room or, worse, took them away, she would have had a hard time justifying her blunder with Seteth.  
Somehow invigorated by Byleth’s rushed flight, Sothis, who had kept silent until then, chose that very moment to start giggling in excited soughs.  
The Girl didn’t spare Byleth her salacious comments as the mercenary tugged herself into bed, covering up over her head: they were in the first days of autumn, nights had grown rather crisp up there in the mountains and she had run in the brisk air covered only in linen coat.  
"Did you realize, I would hope, that this jacket doesn’t come with the Academy kit" Sothis said.  
Shrugging, Byleth reached out to turn on the bedside lamp and took the coat in her hands.  
Sothis was right, of course: checking its hems, Byleth found a shabby silk label with some initials embroidered on it by unskilled hands.  
"HvV: whose might it ever be?" the Girl teased.  
" Oh, darn!" Byleth replied as she muffled the light, the jacket still among her fingers.  
Returning it to its legitimate owner was completely out of question: she was going to try and put it back in the locker room, perhaps after a few weeks when, she hoped, Hubert would have forgotten the incident of that evening.

Yet, as she was to find through the following days, Hubert was not easily swayed by the passing of time, and neither was she.  
She simply could not get herself to forget what she had saw in the baths.  
And then, there returned the symptoms- every time she looked at him, every time she was alone in her quarters and recalled his figure and how it stood naked before her eyes.

No, this was definitely _not_ a topic to share with Manuela- or with anyone else, if that mattered.

She was going to find a cure on her own, just her and some good, rational medicine book she planned to retrieve from the library- as soon as Hubert graced her with some relenting in his obsessive quest for anything unusual or suspicious about her conduct.


End file.
